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Throwing Shade at the Sun: Ranking All the Different Types of Stars

This article was originally posted on Inverse. By Neel V. Patel There are an estimated 1 billion trillion stars in the universe. (That’s a 1 followed by 21 zeros.) Each one is unique, but, generally speaking, you can divvy them up into special classes, based on a certain set of criteria. This helps scientists to better wrap their heads around what kind of characteristics to expect when watching and observing those big balls of hot plasma hanging around in space. These classifications are largely centered around spectral characteristics, which comes down to the type of electromagnetic radiation the star is